It’s taken me a long time to get to the men’s and women’s U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championships. The women played in late April at Maridoe Golf Club in Carrollton, Texas. The men were a month later, the week before Memorial Day, at Chambers Bay, site of the 2015 U.S. Open in University Place, Wash.
The Four-Ball Championships have been a personal favorite of mine right from the start when I watched high school juniors Brynn Walker and Madelein Herr, a couple of kids I had covered during my time at the Delaware County Daily Times, playing on TV in the inaugural U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship in 2015 against the breathtaking background of the Pacific Dunes Course at the Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon.
But the Four-Ball Championships had some added meaning in 2021 as they were the first rank-and-file United States Golf Association championships to be contested in the aftermath of the dark days of 2020 when the USGA was forced to cancel all of its national championships with the exception of the U.S. Open, the U.S. Women’s Open, the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Women’s Amateur because of the coronavirus pandemic.
One of the casualties was the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship, which was scheduled to be played at Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Wissahickon and Militia Hill courses. The field was to have included several pairs with local ties, including Cricket’s own Matthew Kocent and Robbie Walizer.
On the long road back to normalcy – and we’re not there, yet, not by a long shot – the playing of national golf championships featuring teams of top amateur players – just, you know, a couple of pals putting their talents together – the two Four-Ball Championships deserved to be celebrated as the mileposts they were along the way.
And besides, some of the local teams were comprised of some of my favorite players and I didn’t get to give them their just due …
It’s been a decade since I wandered over to White Manor Country Club to cover the Bert Linton Inter-Ac League individual championship after attending a media day event hyping the 2011 AT&T Championship, which would be held at nearby Aronimink Golf Club later that year.
It was the final Bert Linton contested in the spring as the Inter-Ac joined the majority of local high school teams by switching its golf season from the spring to the fall later that year. The winner that day was Malvern Prep freshman Michael Davis, who birdied the last three holes to pull away for an impressive victory.
I followed another freshman, The Haverford School’s Cole Berman, a lot that day. He would come back seven months later and win the Bert Linton in its first fall edition at Philadelphia Cricket Club’s Militia Hill Course, the first of his two Bert Linton titles.
They were rivals, but they became friends, even when they were matched in the scheduled 36-hole final in the 2015 BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship at Llanerch Country Club, Berman putting his name on the J. Wood Platt Trophy with a 6 and 4 victory over Davis. Their meeting at Llanerch followed a strong freshman season for Berman at Georgetown and an equally solid freshman season for Davis at Princeton.
So, I thought Berman, who has joined Merion Golf Club, and Davis, still listing Aronimink as his home course, would be a pretty good team when they earned a ticket to the 2021 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball Championship at Chambers Bay in a Golf Association of Philadelphia-administered local qualifier at Applebrook Golf Club last fall.
And the two 25-year-olds did make some noise at Chambers Bay. They survived an 11-for-six playoff to make it into the match-play bracket after opening with a 67 at Chambers Bay and adding a 68 at The Home Course in nearby DuPont, Wash. for an 8-under 135 total in qualifying.
Berman and Davis then rallied from 2-down after six holes to claim a 1-up victory over Joe Greiner, whose day job is as the regular caddy for Max Homa on the PGA Tour, and former Pepperdine standout Johnny MacArthur in the opening round of match play.
Berman and Davis saw their U.S. Four-Ball Championship run come to an end in the round of 16, but it came in epic fashion as they fell in 25 holes to St. Mary’s College teammates Blake Hathcoat and Michael Slesinski. It was the longest match in the history of the event.
Berman and Davis had won the 11th, 12th and 13th holes to turn a 1-down deficit into a 2-up advantage with five holes to play. But Hathcoat and Slesinski picked up wins at the 16th and 17th holes to even the match. The two pairs proceeded to halve the next seven holes before Hathcoat finished it off with a two-putt birdie at Chambers Bay’s par-5 first hole. The marathon match lasted seven hours and 54 minutes.
Davis qualified for match play in the aftermath of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball in last month’s BMW Philadelphia Amateur at Cedarbrook Country Club, falling in the opening round to eventual winner Conor McGrath of Huntingdon Valley Country Club and Temple. Berman missed the match-play cutoff by two shots, despite carding a 1-under 69 at The 1912 Club, the other qualifying site.
But their partnership at Chambers Bay had already made 2021 a memorable year golf-wise for them.
The U.S. Amateur Four-Ball crown went to a couple of Florida teen-agers, 19-year-old Kiko Francisco Coelho and 18-year-old Leopoldo Herrera III, who edged Nevada teammates Brendan Macdougall and Sam Meek on the 19th hole of the final.
It looked like the 23-year-old Macdougall and the 21-year-old Meek were going to hoist the trophy when Macdougall nearly holed his approach to the 605-yard, par-5 finishing hole at Chambers Bay. But Herrera holed a 14-foot birdie putt to send the match to extra holes.
Coelho reached the green of the 555-yard, par-5 first hole, the first hole of the playoff, and two-putted for a birdie. Meek couldn’t get his four-footer for birdie to extend the match to fall and Coelho, a native of Portugal who is headed for Arizona State, and Herrera, whose parents came to Florida from Venezuela, were USGA champions.
It was a long day for Macdougall and Meek as they began it by finishing up a 1-up quarterfinal victory over Hathcoat and Slesinski. That match got off to a late state because of the marathon victory for Hathcoat and Sleskinski over Berman and Davis.
Macdougall and Meek then pulled out a semifinal victory in 19 holes over Loyola of Chicago teammates Tyler Anderson and Devin Johnson, the Missouri Valley Conference individual champion earlier in the spring. With 19 more holes in the title match against Coelhol and Herrera, Macdougall and Meek played 41 holes on the final day of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball.
In the other semifinal, Coelhol and Herrera booked their spot in the final with a 3 and 2 victory over Notre Dame teammates Palmer Jackson, the 2018 PIAA Class AAA champion as a senior at Franklin Regional, and Davis Chatfield of Attleboro, Mass.
Jackson and Chatfield, who also emerged from the 11-for-six playoff for the final six spots in the match-play bracket, were coming off a disappointing end to their college season as the Fighting Irish had finished eighth in the NCAA Stillwater Regional, failing to advance to the NCAA Championship.
Jackson and Chatfield were able to work out their frustrations in the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball as they took out a bunch of USGA champions on their way to the semifinals.
In the opening round, Jackson and Chatfield eliminated the most recent winners of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball, Scott Harvey and Todd Mitchell, 2-up. Harvey and Mitchell had captured the title in 2019 at Bandon Dunes. Harvey won the 2014 U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship at Saucon Valley Country Club and lost in an epic 37-hole final to Stewart Hagestad in the 2016 U.S. Mid-Am final at Stonewall.
In the second round, Jackson and Chatfield ousted 2015 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball champions Nathan Smith, the 42-year-old from Pittsburgh who is a four-time U.S. Mid-Amateur champion, and Todd White, a 53-year-old from Spartanburg, S.C., with a 3 and 2 decision. Jackson and Smith would meet again a couple of weeks later in the Pennsylvania Golf Association’s R. Jay Sigel Match Play Championship semifinals at Sewickley Heights Golf Club with Jackson winning the match on his way to the title.
In the quarterfinals, Jackson and Chatfield needed 21 holes to get past Preston Summerhays, the 2019 U.S. Junior Amateur champion at the Inverness Club in Toledo, Ohio from Scottsdale, Ariz., and Luke Potter of Encinitas, Calif.
A couple of 18-year-olds who will be future Atlantic Coast Conference rivals, Kelly Chinn of Great Falls, Va., a Duke recruit, and David Ford of Peachtree Corners, Ga., a North Carolina recruit, claimed medalist honors in qualifying as they blitzed The Home Course for a 9-under 62 in the opening round before adding a 7-under 65 at Chambers Bay for a 16-under 127 total.
Michigan teammates Brent Ito of Arddley, N.Y. and Patrick Sullivan of Grosse Pointe, Mich. were a shot behind Chinn and Ford with a 15-under 128 total after adding a sizzling 9-under 63 at Chambers Bay to their opening round of 6-under 65 at The Home Course.
Another pair that emerged from the 11-for-six playoff was a couple of familiar names from the 2016 U.S. Mid-Am, Hagestad, the winner at Stonewall, and Derek Busby, who fell to three-time BMW Philadelphia Amateur champion Michael McDermott in the round of 16.
Hagestad was fresh off playing on his third winning U.S. team in the Walker Cup, contested earlier in May at the iconic Seminole Golf Club in Juno Beach, Fla. Hagestad and Busby gave Macdougall and Meek, the eventual finalists, all they wanted in the first round of match play before falling in 19 holes.
The Philadelphia Cricket Club pair of Marty McGuckin and Scott Storck, the medalists in the local qualifier at Applebrook last fall, matched par with a 72 at Chambers Bay in qualifying for match play before adding a solid 4-under 67 at The Home Course. Their 4-under 139 did not earn them a spot in the match-play bracket.
The team of Huntingdon Valley’s Vince Kwon and Little Mill Country Club’s Troy Vannucci, who had made a memorable run to the semifinals of the U.S. Amateur Four-Ball two years ago at Bandon Dunes, opened with a 2-under 69 at The Home Course before matching par with a 72 at Chambers Bay for a 2-under 141 total that left them short of the match-play bracket.
Vannucci came home and made a nice run to the quarterfinals of the BMW Philadelphia Amateur at Cedarbrook before falling to Little Mill clubmate Jack Irons, the eventual finalist.
I referenced the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship in a post I did in April on the Big East Championship. I had thought Kaitlyn Lees, the former Agnes Irwin standout and a three-time Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship winner, might make her debut for Georgetown in that Big East Championship.
But that was the only tournament appearance of the entire 2020-2021 season for the Hoyas and it conflicted with the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball, for which Lees and former Conestoga standout Samantha Yao had earned a spot in in a GAP-administered local qualifier last fall at Waynesborough Country Club.
I did a fairly complete report on that qualifier as Lees and Yao made it a point to say their appearance at Maridoe Golf Club would be one last chance to represent Dartmouth on a national stage.
Lees had a strong freshman season at Dartmouth in the 2018-’19 campaign, finishing third at The Ridge at Back Brook in Ringoes, N.J. in her first appearance in the Ivy League Championship. The Big Green’s runnerup finish in the team standings was the highest in the history of the program. Yao, a two-time District One Class AAA champion and a three-time PIAA Class AAA qualifier at Conestoga, was joining Lees in Hanover, N.H. for the ill-fated 2019-’20 season.
When the pandemic struck in 2020, Dartmouth made the mystifying decision to drop the program entirely. I heard last week that Dartmouth is reinstating the golf program, but that comes too late for Lees.
Lees transferred to Georgetown, although she sat out the 2020-’21 season as Georgetown struggled to decide when or if to allow its players to compete amid the pandemic. Pretty sure Lees still has two more years of eligibility with the Hoyas. Yao decided to stay at Dartmouth and continue to pursue her academic goals and not play college golf, although maybe she will still get that opportunity with the Big Green.
Lees and Yao opened with an 80 at Maridoe, incurring a somewhat mysterious two-stroke penalty after the round was over for slow play. But they did represent Dartmouth proudly with a final round of 2-under 70, although their 150 total left them two shots outside of a five-for-one playoff for the final spot in the match-play bracket.
The title went to a couple of 17-year-olds, Savannah Barber of Fort Worth, Texas and Alexa Saldana of Mexico, who met as roommates at the Crown Golf Academy in Arlington, Texas, all of about 30 minutes away from Maridoe.
Barber and Saldana cruised to a 5 and 4 decision over a couple of Florida teens, 19-year-old Jillian Bourdage of Tamarac and 18-year-old Casey Weidenfeld of Pembroke Pines.
Bourdage, coming off her freshman season at Ohio State, is no stranger to USGA finals. She and Weidenfeld fell in the 2019 U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball final at Timuquana Country Club in Jacksonville, Fla. to Erica Shepherd and Megan Furtney, who are teammates at Duke these days.
Later that year, Bourdage reached the final of the U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at SentryWorld in Stevens Point, Wis. before falling to China’s Angelina Ye, who’s playing at Stanford now.
But it was Bourdage and Weidenfeld, who will join the Auburn program later this summer, who flinched first as they made four bogeys in a seven-hole stretch and Barber and Saldana took full advantage.
Barber and Saldana won the eighth hole with a par to go ahead for good. Saldana dropped a long birdie putt on the 10th hole and, after the two sides halved the 11th hole with birdies, Barber and Saldana won the 12th and 13th holes to take a commanding 4-up lead.
The semifinals earlier in the day April 28th featured a couple of thrillers with Barber and Saldana and Bourdage and Widenfeld both needing 20 holes to knock off a couple of teams comprised of some of the future stars of the women’s game.
Barber and Saldana were all out to defeat Gianna Clemente, the 13-year-old phenom from Warren, Ohio, and her partner, Avery Zweig, the 14-year-old phenom from McKinney, Texas.
Clemente joined the short list of 11-year-olds who have earned a trip to the U.S. Women’s Amateur when she teed it up at Old Waverly Golf Club in West Point, Miss. in 2019. Zweig claimed a bustout American Junior Golf Association (AJGA) victory in the Annika Invitational at the Squire & Slammer Course at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Fla. in January.
Bourdage and Weidenfeld had to work overtime to get past Alexa Pano, a 16-year-old from Lake Worth, Fla., and Paris Hilinski, a 17-year-old from Palm Beach, Fla.
It only seems like Pano has been around forever. That’s because Pano, like Zweig, was one of the subjects of the “The Short Game,” a 2013 documentary produced by the celebrity power couple of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel which followed youngsters as they competed in the 2012 U.S. Kids Golf World Championships at the Pinehurst Resort in North Carolina.
Like Zweig, Pano played in a U.S. Women’s Amateur as an 11-year-old in 2016 at Rolling Green Golf Club, the William Flynn gem in our backyard in Springfield, Delaware County.
As a 13-year-old in 2018, Pano lost in the scheduled 36-hole final of the 2018 U.S. Girls’ Junior Championship at the Poppy Hills Golf Course on northern California’s Monterey Peninsula to Yealimi Noh, an LPGA Tour performer these days, after beating Lucy Li, she’s a professional now, too, in the semifinals. All in the same day.
In 2019, Pano, a grizzled veteran at 14, earned a share of medalist honors in qualifying for match play in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at Old Waverly.
Several teams with local ties made it into the match-play bracket and two of them hooked up in the opening round as the Southern Methodist pair of Canadian Ashley Chow and Katie James, a member of Shady Side Academy’s 2016 PIAA Class AAA championship team, knocked off the tandem of three-time Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur champion Katie Miller Gee and Lauren Greenlief, the 2015 U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur champion at Squire Creek Country Club in Choudrant, La. from Ashburn, Va.
Chow, a sophomore, and James, a senior, rolled to a 6 and 4 victory over Miller Gee and Greenlief, but saw their bid ended in the second round by a couple of California teens, Anna Davis and Lucy Yuan. The day began with Chow and Davis scrambling to find some clubs to play with after their sticks were stolen from their car the night after their opening-round win.
Yale teammates Ami Gianchandani, a product of The Pingry School, and Kaitlyn Lee suffered a 2 and 1 setback at the hands of Kentucky teammates Jensen Castle and Marissa Wenzler. Castle and Wenzler would go on in the weeks following the U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball to help the Wildcats reach the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Ariz. to cap their sophomore seasons.
Meghan Stasi, a South Jersey native who has won the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur four times, and her partner, Dawn Woodward, a veteran team that has qualified for every U.S. Women’s Amateur Four-Ball, fell in the opening round to the youngest team in the tournament, Clemente and Zweig, 3 and 2 in the opening round of match play.
Future ACC rivals, Rylie Heflin, a recent Tower Hill graduate from Avondale, Chester County who will join the powerhouse Duke program later this summer, and Melena Barrientos of Plano, Texas, who is headed for Clemson later this summer, reached the second round of match play by knocking off Jenae Leovao and Jasmine Leovao, 16-year-old twin sisters from Oceanside, Calif., in 19 holes.
Heflin and Barrientos then fell to Hilinski and Pano, 3 and 2, in the round of 16. Heflin finished in a tie for seventh place in her final appearance in the Pennsylvania Junior Girls’ Championship at Lebanon Country Club last week, an event she won in 2017.
The 21-year-old Gianchandani of Watchung, N.J. and the 19-year-old Lee of Scarsdale, N.Y. didn’t have a college golf season as the Ivy League never would allow its players to compete in the 2020-’21 season. Not sure what that was all about, but the two Yalies came out firing at Maridoe and shared medalist honors in qualifying with the teen queens, Hilinksi and Pano and Clemente and Zweig.
Gianchandani and Lee and Clemente and Zweig each carded back-to-back 3-under 69s to land on 6-under 138. Hilinski and Pano added a 4-under 68 to their opening-round 70 to get their share of the top spot.
Clemente and Zweig got a huge boost in the second round when Clemente’s 7-iron at the par-3 14th hole found the bottom of the cup for a hole-in-one.
The 36-year-old Miller Gee, who married Oakmont Country Club head pro Devin Gee in the last year, and the 30-year-old Greenlief carded a pair of 2-under 70s to finish in a tie for fifth place in a strong showing in qualifying. Heflin and Barrientos added a 70 to their opening-round 73 to finish in a tie for 12th place at 1-under 143.
The 42-year-old Stasi and the 46-year-old Woodard earned their spot in the match-play bracket as they rallied from an opening-round 75 with a 1-under 71 for a 2-over 146 total that left them in 30th place.
The Delaware pair of Oihana Etxezarreta, a sophomore from Spain, and Anna Kittelson, a senior from Boise, Idaho, bounced back from an opening-round 77 with a 1-over 73, but their 150 total left them short of qualifying for match play.
Etzedarreta and Kittleson emerged from the same GAP-administered local qualifier at Waynesborough last fall as Lees and Yao did.
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